Crafting your own virtual charity sport event: Emotional energy, rituals, digital intimacy and the benefits of inclusivity

COVID-19 created a global sporting standstill for mega-events like the Olympics and had a similarly profound impact on small and local events such as charity sport events. These events were forced to pivot to virtual offerings to continue to deliver the event experience and impacts, including critical fundraising outcomes. This paper uses semi-structured interviews with participants in Cancer Council Tasmania's first virtual Women's 5 km walk/run (W5K) event to examine the ways that people make, stage, and experience a virtual charity sport event. The current research captures the creative labours, interaction rituals and digital practices participants used to craft their own do-it-yourself virtual event and the practical and inclusive benefits they afforded. Extending Randall Collins’ theory of interactional rituals with social shaping of technology and ‘digital intimacy’ perspectives, the paper argues that the virtual W5K produced a different but not diminished form of ‘emotional energy’ that allowed participants to stage their own ‘micro’ events, produce a meaningful experience and make visible morally worthy charitable subjectivities. This research contributes to the sociology of sport by building an understanding of how the pandemic impacted small and community sports events and adapting Collins’ theory to recognise digitally mediated sports events as powerful generators of emotional energy.